The Making of Development

It’s the 2-year anniversary of my debut album, Development. In honor of this, I thought I’d make a post about how it all came together!

In 2017-2019, I took a long break from releasing original music. I had gone through a rough breakup and I lost three people close to me during this time. I was all kinds of distracted. I just had concepts of songs, but nothing fully completed.

I remember Khalid’s album, Free Spirit, came out in April, 2019, and that was the driving force I needed to start creating again. Since Khalid and I are around the same age, it was easy to write about my own experiences by listening to his. His album was about seeing life through a 21-year-old’s eyes. I thought it would be relatable to tell a story about opening up and not having to go through life alone.

I kept a lot to myself during that time, and all my friends begged me to open up and talk to them. They did everything they could to help me unlearn all of the trauma from my past. This is how I came up with the name for my album: Development.

Then came the song selection process. I wrote a lot of songs, and I initially thought select songs would fit the album better and others would go to another concept. But then I decided to have every song idea that came to me be a song for the album. In the end, it all fit together perfectly.

Next, I wanted to recruit some help. My friend and mentor, Austin, aka AusTheBear, always talked about his closest friends being his longtime collaborators. With this being my first album since 2016, I wanted to branch out and work on a team. I used to write and produce everything myself, and it got lonely after a while. I recruited my friend, Russ, who was really into songwriting and playing guitar. He and I already wrote some songs together, so it seemed like a great fit! Then, I recruited my friend, Kevin, who also mentioned he wanted to try his hand at producing an album for someone. I had this strong feeling that he’d be a great choice to work with as well. Listening back to the album, you can hear that I was proven right.

We all clicked amazingly when we worked together. Even with our friend, Jordan, getting some great action shots for promo and studio sessions. The process of making this album was magical. I thought this could be the incredible start of us forming a group, which we called Basssline. There were three of us to represent the three s’s and we all sang bass in our a cappella group, so it stuck!

Everything fell into place, and we were ready to release it in May, 2020, which was graduation day. Unfortunately, COVID struck two months prior and messed everything up. Timing fell apart, and the boys and I weren’t able to meet in person like we hoped. We tried to do as much as we could virtually, but it didn’t work out. We ended up parting ways, since I was moving to Chicago and Kevin and Russ’ careers were just beginning.

A few years went by, and I kept revisiting the album. It was to a point where I knew it was time to release it. So I decided my birthday in 2023 would be the release date under my name! Overall, the album signified letting go of the past to start fresh, just like how I view my birthday as a new beginning. Releasing it on my birthday was the perfect decision, and I’ve been able to move forward the way I wanted to.

Development is available to listen to on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and many others! If you haven’t had the pleasure of listening to this incredible healing journey, go listen now!